Special Coverage

History Challenge answers

1. The St. Francis Jockey Club was headed by San Francisco dentist Charles H. Strub. It planned to build a new racetrack in the suburb of Ingleside, site of a lavish racetrack that operated from 1895 until it was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.

When Dr. Strub got the license, Bill Kyne turned his sights to the Los Angeles area. With his partners, Kyne explored locations in Culver City and El Monte. In the meantime, the citizens of Ingleside began to make it clear that they would never allow a racetrack to be built in their community. A frustrated Strub pulled up stakes and joined with a group in Southern California to form the Los Angeles Turf Club.

Strub and company bought property on the former Baldwin estate and built Santa Anita Park, just a few miles from the location of the track of the same name that operated from 1907 to 1909.

Kyne returned north and built Bay Meadows on an abandoned airfield in San Mateo, just a few miles from Tanforan Racetrack.

2. Time Supply won stakes from coast to coast from 1934 to 1936. Among them were the Massachusetts Handicap, the Narragansett Special in Rhode Island, the Bahamas Stakes in Florida, and the San Antonio Handicap in California.

At the inaugural Bay Meadows meeting in 1934, Time Supply captured the Sacramento and Bay Meadows handicaps. A year later in the Bay Meadows Handicap, Time Supply finished second to Head Play, who earlier was on the losing end of the famous "fighting finish" with Brokers Tip in the 1933 Kentucky Derby. (Head Play went on to win the Preakness.)

Time Supply competed in the first four Santa Anita Handicaps, finishing third in the inaugural running, second the following year, and then fifth and 16th. He finished his career with 18 wins in 50 starts.

3. Cowboy singing star Stuart Hamblen put his stakes horse El Lobo on an old twin-engine Conestoga Flying Tiger cargo plane in October 1945. A filly, Featherfoot, went along for company on the 380-mile flight from Los Angeles to San Mateo.

The plane landed on the Bay Meadows parking lot and taxied to the clubhouse entrance, where it was greeted by Kyne, other track officials, the press, and many onlookers who had watched the plane land.

El Lobo, who had become the first racehorse ever to be flown for a racing engagement, won the Inaugural Handicap the following day. He also won the Burlingame Handicap that season.

4. On May 1, 1954, Andy Crevolin's diminutive colt Determine, under Ray York, drew off in the stretch at Churchill Downs to win the 80th Kentucky Derby, becoming the first gray to win the race.

Two hours later and 2,300 miles away, the Crevolin-owned Imbros, under Johnny Longden, won the inaugural running of the William P. Kyne Handicap at Bay Meadows, the first $100,000 race ever contested in Northern California.

Crevolin, a Southern California automobile magnate, and his trainer Bill Molter thus became the first owner and trainer to take down two hundred-granders on the same day.

5. Ole Bob Bowers equaled the 1 1/8-mile dirt world record in winning the 1968 Tanforan Handicap at Bay Meadows. In three seasons on the track, he started 30 times, winning 6.

With little pedigree, Ole Bob Bowers did not attract much attention at stud. In 1975, his sales yearlings were averaging just more than $1,100, when he was sold as a 12-year-old stallion at Keeneland for $900.

But one of his sales yearlings was the popular John Henry, who won 30 stakes and retired in 1984 as the richest horse in the world with career earnings of more than $6.5 million. John Henry, who died last year at age 32, garnered two Horse of the Year titles and a total of seven Eclipse Awards.